Masterclass in rhetoric: Obama's Mandela lecture

Barack Obama’s lecture to mark Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday last week was a masterclass in the art of public speaking.

For anyone looking to improve their oratorical skills, here’s a look at some of the devices Obama used, all taken from a single three-minute snippet towards the end of the lecture. 

Watch Barack Obama’s closing call for “persistence and hope”  (3’06”)

Signal your structure

 “[This] which I’m sure you’ll be thankful for, leads to my final point.” 

He is careful throughout the long speech to highlight its structure, constantly giving the audience pointers about what is coming next. I call this technique “rhetorical road signage”: it avoids confusing – and losing – your listeners.

Pause for effect

“We have to follow Madiba’s example of persistence… and of hope.”

Obama is a master of timing. Notice how he pauses for effect between “persistence” and “hope”. He uses long silences many times in his speech, even though he is reading it off a teleprompter, thereby adding tangible dramatic tension. 

Sculpt the air

“It is tempting… to believe… the pendulum has swung permanently.”

Watch Obama’s sweeping gesture to illustrate the swing of the pendulum. Knowing what do with our hands when we speak is a constant concern for orators. One tip, scan your speech beforehand to identify a few key words you can sculpt in the air as you speak.

Address the audience

“Just as people spoke about the triumph of democracy in the 90s, now you are hearing people talk about the end of democracy and the triumph of tribalism and the strong man. We have to resist that cynicism.”

Watch how Obama pulls the audience in here. He shifts from what people in general are saying, to what “you” are hearing, to how “we” have to resist. It’s all in the pronouns.

Alter your tone

 “Yes, by the end of his life, Madiba embodied the successful struggle for human rights, but the journey was not easy, it wasn’t pre-ordained.”

Here, Obama suddenly shifts gear. His tone is no longer a lecturer addressing 15,000 people in a Johannesburg stadium, but a friend chatting across the table.

Picture it

“The man went to prison for almost three decades. He split limestone in the heat, he slept in a small cell, and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement.”

Obama doesn’t just say that Mandela went to prison: he gives vivid examples of what that entailed. This is a form of rhetorical “metonymy”, essentially the trick of referring to something by focusing on just one aspect of it.

Put yourself in the story

“And I remember talking to some of his former colleagues…”

A personal anecdote such as this can help affirm your personal credibility in delivering the speech. This notion of the speaker’s credibility, known as “ethos”, is one of the founding principles of rhetoric.

Use some stagecraft

“They hadn’t realised when they were released, just the sight of a child, the idea of holding a child, they they they had missed – it wasn’t something available to them…., for decades.”

Obama isn’t above a little theatrics, and to good effect. Although he had a teleprompter on either side of his podium, he appears to search for his words here, sounding all the more sincere for it.

Play with concepts

“And yet his power actually grew during those years – and the power of his jailers diminished.”

This is rhetorical device known as “chiasmus”, meaning an inverted dynamic between two adjoining phrases. It’s another well-worn orator’s trick, but Obama’s masterful pause makes it seem brand new.

Ring it out

“It might not happen tomorrow, it might not happen in the next week, it might not even happen in your lifetime.”

Repeating the first few words of a phrase to build to a climax is known to rhetoricians as “anaphora”. Badly done, it’s tacky. Well done, in this case by so carefully controlling the cadence, it’s a sonorous winner.

Make your point, and then repeat it

“Things may go backwards for a while, but ultimately, right makes might, not the other way around, ultimately, the better story can win out.”

Hope is central to Obama’s worldview, but he never reduces it to a mere slogan. He begins this final section by saying he will talk about “persistence and hope”. He does exactly that, and ends on the same idea, but without being repetitive. Next time you’re jotting down your “key messages” ahead of a speech, write down three ways of stating your main point.  

 Charles Fleming, 23rd July 2018

You can read my other articles about rhetoric and public speakers in the news on the Expression/Impression blog, available here.